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Resto Shamans rejoice–Patch 5.4 is here!

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been less than a year since we first set foot in Pandaria. But here we are at Patch 5.4, the last raid content of the expansion, finally ready to face down a Horde leader run amok. Not only is this patch introducing a massive raid instance (seriously, it’s BIG) and an entirely new zone, it also brings with it some of the most significant changes that Resto Shaman have seen in Mists. So, to get you prepped for the content to come and get you a little more familiar with the changes to your toolkit, this post will run through Spell, Glyph and Talent changes, talk a little bit (just a little!) about the Legendary cloak, and give you some solid facts about what you can expect from our super Tier 16 bonuses.

Spell Changes

Chain Heal’s jump reduction has been removed. It will now heal 4 targets for the same base amount. This equates to a ~58% increase in base throughput (1 + 0.7 + 0.49 + 0.343 = 2.53 versus 1 x 4 = 4), before the application of Mastery.

Riptide’s mana cost was reduced by 25%. Although not a game changer, this is a much appreciated change because it makes it less burdensome to use Glyph of Riptide to toss out hots (which will have more of an impact in Siege’s high damage and/or high movement encounters).

But the biggest changes that Resto Shaman will see are associated with Healing Rain. As of the patch, HR will function as a 6-target smart heal. So, whereas HR previously would heal all targets within its area of effect (including players, minions, and pets), HR will now smartly select and heal only 6 targets with each tick. In terms of base throughput for HR, this change is effectively a net zero adjustment, since the diminishing returns cap (set at 6 players) ensured that your total base healing from HR remained the same at any density between 6 and 25. Now, instead of suffering DR on the ticks, your HR will be limited to healing just six targets at any given time. Which means that those ticks are going to be much higher values than you might have been used to. Tack onto this a 100% bonus to HR healing, via Purification, and you can expect to see your HR hitting fairly hard.

Now, there are two additional reasons why Resto Shaman should care about this change. Firstly, HR will no longer heal pets exclusive of the target limit. In other words, pets can still be healed by HR, but they will count towards the 6-target cap. (Pre-5.4, pets in HR did not count towards the DR limit, so as not to punish the shaman for the presence of pets in raid). Unfortunately, the 6-target constraint that is being introduced as a solution to encounter lag has the unfortunate effect of eliminating the massive amount of overhealing which HR was doing on pets and minions. “Pffffft, so what?” you might say. But this is critical because … without all those pets and minions bolstering your total throughput on the raid, your Ascendance healing is going to suffer, because you have much less total healing from HR than pre-5.4. So, in Siege, expect to see your Ascendance throughput drop substantially. (My raid testing had it at 1-2M healing per use, on a stacked raid. YMMV).

The second thing that you should expect to see as a result of the change to HR is a reduction in the throughput of Earthliving and a lower uptime on Ancestral Vigor on the raid. Both of these effects are a result of the fact that HR will no longer be recording ticks on every player within the area of effect, which lowers the total number of potential occurrences. For Ancestral Vigor, while the uptime on the raid will be lower, the ultimate effect is that you’ll have that bonus HP on targets that really need it (because remember: the smart heal of HR will choose the targets with the lowest HP values, also resulting in it optimizing your Mastery a bit more! Yay Mastery!) For Earthliving, the 6-target cap will significantly reduce the overall throughput of the spell in stacked situations:

So, expect to see Earthliving recording lower healing overall as a result.

** Note: Lore has confirmed via tweet that Ancestral Vigor’s duration has been increased to 30 seconds to compensate for the lower proc chance. At present, he stated that there are no plans to change Earthliving.

Glyph Changes

Shamans will receive a whole host of Glyph choices in 5.4, but buried among the frogs, spirit raptors, and compys are some Major Glyph changes that are worth noticing:

Glyph of Riptide’s reduction on the initial heal is now only 75% (was 90%). As I mentioned above, in combination with the mana cost reduction for Riptide, this makes RT hotting a little more viable for those without the legendary meta, and it increases the already substantial throughput of this instant cast heal.

Glyph of Chain Heal now only introduces a 2-second cooldown on CH, in exchange for 100% increased jump distance. Although this change is a 50% reduction in the cooldown, this still remains a glyph that you’re going to use only when players will never be clumped. For 25s, this will likely still be a glyph that we eschew, but in 10s I can see it being useful in fights like Paragons and Iron Juggernaut.

Glyph of Healing Storm no longer increases the healing done by Healing Rain. Although this is a glyph that affects Enhance only, I mention it here because it means that your Enhancement Shaman in raid are not going to be able to contribute the powerful healing that they had been able to dish out in T15.

Also, I feel inclined to mention here that Glyph of Rain of Frogs does not turn your Healing Rain into a shower of Amphibians, much to my (and I’m sure, your) disappointment. Frog showers had such promise!

Talent Changes

Talents are another area where Resto Shaman can expect some shakeup, with the big one change being:

Healing Tide Totem is now a baseline spell for all shaman. Furthermore, for shaman in 25-man content, HTT will target 12 players (versus 5, previously), making it an incredibly potent healing cooldown. (If you do decide to align HTT with Elemental Mastery or profession/race CD’s, expect to see some pretty sizable healing from this totem).

Rushing Streams is the new Tier 75 replacement for the spot previously occupied by HTT. Offering 115% healing on two targets, this new talent excels in situations where Resto Shaman are typically weak, namely encounters with spread players and with heavy movement. For most encounters, I would say this makes Rushing Streams the default choice. The only exception being in fights with a stacked raid, where you can make the most of Ancestral Guidance.

Totemic Restoration has been removed and replaced with Totemic Persistence. This talent will allow you to overlap totems of the same class without destroying the existing totem. For example: if you have Mana Tide down and then your Healing Stream comes off CD, you can drop it as well without it destroying MT. While a nice convenience, Call of the Elements remains a much stronger tool in this tier, especially if you elect to run with Rushing Streams.

Astral Shift’s CD has been reduced to 90 seconds. While this won’t put the CD on par with the likes of other major damage CDs out there (eg: Deterrence, Dispersion), more damage reduction is never a bad thing.

Stone Bulwark totem’s initial absorb amount was increased by ~33%. Again, while it’s not a major buff, the increased initial absorb will make it more powerful to use when you know that big damage is incoming.

Conductivity now extends the duration of your Healing Rain (instead of serving as a redistribution area of effect). With this revamped Conductivity, every HW, GHW, HS, or CH will extend the duration of your existing HR by 4 seconds. Unfortunately, Blizzard was pretty smart in recognizing that Resto Shaman would immediately set about planning for and super-charging an HR for the duration of an encounter, so you’ll be forced to re-drop HR every 40 seconds. Because of the strength of Rushing Streams and Ancestral Guidance, it’s unlikely that Conductivity will see much usage by Restos.

Unleashed Fury will finally be a buff on the shaman and not the recipient of the Unleash Life heal. The only effect this change should have is that you’ll actually be able to use the +50% heal on the target that needs it.

Legendary Cloaks

Since the legendary cloak has been absolutely talked to death by just about everyone in the community, and, quite frankly, there isn’t that much to talk about in the first place, I’ll keep my comments to saying this … While you can set out to try and optimize the procs as much as possible, you’ll likely be best served just following the regular rules of healing for Resto Shaman—keeping HR down as much as possible and filling with the appropriate heals for the damage going out. Also, bear in mind that not all cloak procs are created equal (meaning: you’re likely not going to catch the EHPS of the legendary cloak on a Rejuv-the-World druid), so don’t worry about it. Remember: free healing is free healing, and it all adds up.

Fun Facts about Tier 16

Lastly, because the final tier of the expansion is almost always accompanied by some fun and powerful set bonuses (usually), I wanted to offer up some fun info about what you can expect when trading in your Tier 15 for your Titan-themed Tier 16:

2-piece (When Earth Shield heals a target, the target will gain 300% of the amount healed as an absorb):

Your 2pc will appear on your ES target’s healing breakdown as “Nature’s Barrier” (unless Skada/Recount/WoL start recognizing this appropriately in the near future)

Nature’s Barrier is calculated as 3x the value of the ES heal (including crits and mastery bonuses)

Nature’s Barrier functions like an absorb (total absorb remaining will be included in the combat log), and I couldn’t find a single occurrence in any of my PTR logs where the effect fell off before being fully consumed.

Yes, you could complain about 2pc T15’s healing contribution being variable, and you’d be right. Mileage may vary and will depend on your type of tank (high avoidance = less procs), whether you’re ESing the main tank or off tank, and how many Resto Shaman you have in raid. However, on the list of “Fights Worth Fighting about Resto Shaman Mechanics”, this one is pretty far down the list.

4-piece (Spiritwalker’s Grace will also summon a spiritual version of yourself that will mimic all cast time targeted spells for 15 sec):

T15 4pc will summon a pet called a Spirit Champion (or a “Spirit Bro”), who will duplicate your heals during the duration of Spiritwalker’s Grace.

Glyph of Spiritwalker’s Grace will extend your Spirit Champion’s presence by 5 seconds, which, if you’re going for maximum throughput, is going to be a good Major Glyph contender for this tier.

Ascendance does not duplicate the healing from Spirit Champions (and visa versa). Likewise, summoning a Spirit Bro while in Ascendance will not empower your Bro with Ascendance as well. (Wouldn’t that have been OP?!)

Ancestral Guidance does not duplicate the healing from Spirit Champions (and visa versa)

——

And with that, I wish you and your raid team the best of luck in Siege!

2pc T15+T16 is an absolutely viable option, and will almost certainly provide more useful to Resto Shaman in 25′s, who were getting a ~1% increase from T15′s lackluster 4pc. T16 4pc is ultimately going to prove more valuable than 2pc/2pc because of the number of burst phases incorporated in most encounters (meaning: Spirit Bros’ healing will still exceed HST, even on heavy spread/movement fights).

In sum: this is most definitely not a tier where you have to wait for 4pc to swap into the new set. And, as usual, the stat gains are worth trading up for (although we do have to contend with Mastery on 3 pieces–yuck–and a veritable crapton of red sockets).

Excellent question–I’ve actually been mulling this over for the past few days and looking over my spell distributions to try and figure out just what will benefit me the most. Starting out on Tuesday, I set my sights on maintaining at least the 7613 haste breakpoint for HR, given how powerful it is this tier. But, I also knew that Crit was still going to provide a large chunk of my throughput on each encounter, and maintaining that haste breakpoint or higher really limits the amount of Crit (and supplemental Resurgence regen) that I can carry.

Based on the pieces I got from the first 12 bosses, the 7613 point seems reasonably maintainable. If anything, with the legendary meta and my current regen trinkets, plus the additional Crit, it might free me up to start replacing my multitude of Spirit gems with some Intellect. (But might chronically leaky mana bar might stop me short of trading them all in for red gems!)

This Enhancement Shaman is sad about not being able to output crazy massive amounts of healing anymore. Jin’rokh on 10N I could easily output 60k HPS as Enhance, thanks to super powered Healing Rains. With the 30% Healing Rain baseline nerf, plus the glyph nerf, my Healing Rains will do 65% less healing overall. Though honestly I expected this nerf like 3 patches ago when I realized that I could outheal most healers as Enhance. But hey, Chain Heal will still be super powered, and with the buff, perhaps not all is lost

As far as Resto goes, lots of much-needed buffs. I’ve been dabbling in my Resto offspec as of late, and while I can still do respectable numbers, the buffs will definitely help.

Conductivity I’m still a bit on the fence on. I could see it being useful for Enhance at least, maybe, but Resto not so much unless the raid is stacked constantly. Though I guess having a long-living Unleash Life’d Healing Rain under the tank and off-tank might still be pretty sweet. But burst healing is usually at a premium, and having Ancestral Guidance is still likely better, for both Enhance and Resto.

Agreed on both points–I’ll miss Enhance healing on progression, but at the same time, it’s nice to see mainspec healing edging past offspec healing. And thus far, Resto Shaman are looking pretty damn strong for Siege.

It was a beautiful thing last night, to see blue at the top of meters. The last time I saw that was … my first kill of HM Feng, 11 months ago.

Hi vixsin, nice roundup here. Just one question to confirm.
Regarding spiritwalker glyph, I actually tried it with 4pc T16, it doesn’t increase the up time for spirit champion, and I checked T16 bounus actually says, it summons an bro for 15sec when you pop spiritwalk’s grace.

As recently as this past Sunday on the PTR, Glyph of Spiritwalker’s Grace was extending Spirit Bro to a 20-second duration. (I sat in Shrine and spammed CH while watching my buff timer tick down–Spirit Bro was next to me, and casting, the entire time). Of course, it’s always possible that this has changed in the live implementation; it’s definitely something to confirm or disprove once 4pc becomes prevalent.

Quick edit: RT glyph was a 90% reduction before the change I believe. Also you should note that “spirit bro” only heals for ~25% of your heal. most people are talking about avoiding the 4pc altogether and getting warforged offpieces with better stat choice.

So, while I do think that the 4pc is still worth pursuing (if it continues to amount to ~1-2% EHPS, then I would expect to see a buff), I agree that its low performance coupled with the fact that it comes with Mastery on 3 of 5 pieces, would be significant enough motivation for players to prioritize primary stat upgrades over the 4pc bonus. But then, this line of thought isn’t too different from last tier, where 4pc was absolutely unnecessary on every 25-man fight except Dark Animus.

Re: cloaks, the timing of your proc has A LOT to do with how much you’re able to get out of it. In contrast to your Protectors experience, mine did a whopping ~1% of my effective healing on that encounter, despite the fact that I did around 180k? 190k? overall. This was in comparison to our Monk, who gained, if I recall correctly, close to 16% from his. And here I laughed at our DPS in T15 as they whined endlessly about trinket RPPM RNG not lining up with their CDs. Now I get to complain about the very same thing … If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Blizzard was deliberately trying to undermine players’ faith in meters …

yeah the cloaks seemed to be based on RNG so much so that meters are more a measure of luck now than anything. I think WOL is going to have to start exluding the top 100 if there cloak proc % is overly high for it to be accurate.

I’m coming back to WoW after having been away for about a year. So my question is really about the Legendary cloak. Are people still running LFR runs in the first MoP tiers to get the cloaks? Would it be worthwhile or at this point, just focus on the Timeless Isle for gear upgrades to get to the T16 raids? Thanks!

My understanding is that, as of 5.4, Throne of Thunder LFR as well as Siege of Org LFR, will both drop the Sigils, Secrets, and Runestones necessary to work your way through the legendary questline.

I would think your best bet would be to head over to the Timeless Isle, pick up some ilvl496 items, upgrade some of them to 535 with Burden of Eternity, and then jump into Siege LFR wings as they become available. While you likely won’t be able to catch up to the cloak all that quickly (I’m not sure if the mobs Timeless Isle gives Black Prince rep, so there’s that to think about too), the good news is that there are tons of gearing options to keep you going while you work towards getting your own shiny legendary wings.

burdens are a little difficult to get. However you can force feed your alts from your main and gear them up to 496 in a day. That gets you into Siege LFR. Furthermore if you grind enough there is a trinket or two thats 535 (555? can’t remember) that a vender sells on the isle for a few thousand coins

So, as a 10 man raiding resto shaman, I tend to use glyph of chaining on nearly every fight. My healing rain is usually hitting about 4 targets at best so the other 2 ticks can be reserved for hopes and dreams. Also healing stream totem is kinda like my best friend. I don’t expect 10 man raiders to see as much of a drop in performance from ascendance due to the healing rain changes as 25 man will. I don’t expect my play healing style will be affected by the healing rain changes as much as yours will.

However, the combination of changes to riptide’s mana cost, better initial healing from glyph of riptide, no healing reduction on chain heal jumps, and 2 second cool down from glyph of chaining all make for an opportunity for a very different style of healing from what I am used to. For heavy AoE situations, it almost comes down to a rotation that you might call “Things You Can Do in Two seconds”. Basically, I’m refreshing earth shield, riptide, healing rain, or totems between chain heal casts. So far, this style has been quite effective.

Fair enough; I do think Glyph of CH relies on you being comfortable with the rotation. For me, it was too discordant from how I’ve been healing in 10s since … hrmm …. Ulduar. (Ugh, that makes me remember doing 25 and 10 lockouts in one week!) So, I’m glad to hear it’s working out for you. And you’re right, with the number of “management” tasks that Restos have, there’s plenty to fill those 2sec with.

It actually is a little more annoying than the 4s variant that i got used to. However it is essientially up whenever you need it outside of spamming. I found the glyph to be required on almost every fight in tot and still is in soo for 10 man. The one difference would be thok for obvious reasons. I wish they would add a glyph for healing rain that when used (grips friendly targets into the rain). Then maybe i’ll finally get my 6 targets on stacked up fights. Honestly no one feels comfortable standing next to each other EVER.

I would imagine that Shammy is talking about bombing healing into the NPCs to inflate your HPS. eg: Pallies can beacon one of the three major friendly NPCs and ensure almost 0% overhealing on beacon, druids can keep hots rolling through them, Shaman can use them as primary CH targets, etc.

Love your articles as always. In my 10 man we have a holy pally, and a resto druid, and myself, a Shaman. I’ve managed to stay pretty competitive with the holy pally, but the druid just brought her main over from another server. Back to number 2 in heals for me.

On a side note, on the first four bosses, Spirit Link Totem gets a crapton of uses, but dat dat long cooldown, small radius, and short duration. Blizzard confirmed for Shaman haters.

I’ve been on top of the recount (10man) for a while now, healing with holy paladin and resto druid, both good. I don’t think there was anything particulary wrong with shamans last patch, really, they weren’t overpowered indeed, but if you’ve played it for a while, especially through the changes it went thro in cata, you’d be still doing very well. HST talent is amazing for 10man, it is just so good + the 10% buff is great, as it’s up on at least half of your members. I never were a big fan of chain heal, having been healing only 10man, but I am getting used to it now that it’s worth using more.
My druid catches up with my healing in 5.4, but still I’m usually leading with little difference. I am honestly not sure what shamans can complain of, we’ve been in a pretty good place lately – that’s my 10man pov.

Class balance is always a Your-Mileage-May-Vary situation, and will depend greatly on the skill and gear of the people that you play with. If you’re holding your own in your 10-man, then more power to you and keep on doing what you’re doing.

However, it is worth saying that on the whole, resto shamans have not been the strongest this expac. The changes that went into place with 5.4 are solutions to bolster our numbers, but unfortunately, still don’t address some of the glaring issues we have (eg: spread healing, burst, CD-reliance, etc.)

I’ve yet to nab 4pc, mostly because I haven’t been that inclined to pursue the bonus, so I can’t tell you how the performance is on live. Thankfully, one of our alt shamans was able to nab it this weekend and I’m hopeful that I might be able to talk him into doing some testing for me.

Have you obtained your transmog gear off of Dark Shaman yet? I am still hoping for mine this coming week.
Also for 10man raids how do you feel about totemic projection? I could never dispute the use of CoE but for a ten man team that has a terrible habit of staying JUST OUT OF REACH of a chain heal jump (sometimes even when glyphed) being able to snap totems where I need them most has been a great boon. Its saved a sloppy storm phase on Qon or poor shock pulse on juggernaut more than once.
What are your thoughts on elemental blast for siege? is the mini trinket-like effects worth using after factoring increased cast time from more haste and the chances you’ll get mastery?
And finally what would you feel to be a safe spirit break point? I am ending most fights at 90%+ mana even while spamming and I mean SPAMMING heals during Malkorok.

1. No Shaman transmog for me yet. But it’s only week 2, so there’s plenty of farm time ahead!
2. I can see Totemic Projection being useful in several encounters where you simply wouldn’t have the time to position preemptively, but in terms of throughput (if you use Rushing Streams), CotE is the winner by a significant margin.
3. Elemental Blast remains a pain to use; the cast time being the largest detriment, followed shortly by the unpredictability of the buff. When I last ran the numbers, at the start of the expac, the best that I could get was a ~40k HPS bonus to HR, without factoring in overhealing. Assuming maybe 50% overhealing, this would be a ~20k HPS bonus, which over 10 seconds, would be ~200k healing. However, if you were to cast 1 HS in the time it took you to cast EB, you’d be at close to the same throughput level. Extend that over the course of an encounter, and understand that it would incredibly unlikely you’d be able to max HR each time, and the end result is … EB just isn’t worth it.
4. I started out this tier with ~21k Spirit, and have been slowly dropping it as I gain more gear. With 2 regen trinkets and the meta, 18k before raid buffs seems to be a reasonable number for the hard modes that we’ve working on. It’s possible that I’ll keep dropping that number even lower, but historically for progression content, I try to err on the side of more mana, knowing that fights will likely be pushing the berserk timer.

I love the site! As a new resto shaman at the start of MoP, I have to say it’s great to see our class finally pulling some weight which has got me buzzing again about raiding – I can’t say I was overly enthused to be the healer to “sit” on heroic horridon and other fights every week.

I’ve been using rushing streams for a lot of our fights and recently got a new warforged piece which is a big upgrade, but would finally break my t15 2p bonus. I’m wondering if the 25% bonus applies to both ticks of hst and is that going to be a significant loss in hst output compared to the well over 300+ int plus other stats I’m gaining via the upgrade.

Thanks for your dedication to this site!!! So glad I came across this!

As you can see, the first two heals are the result of Rushing Streams, and the third heal is the result of T15 2pc. Now, the interesting thing to note here is that the T15 2pc duplicate heal does benefit from the additional healing of Rushing Streams, since 49,155 x 0.25 = 12,289. If it didn’t, we’d expect to see a heal for: (49,155 / 1.15) x 1.25 = 10,685. So in essence, the T15 2pc is actually providing a 43.75% bonus to HST with Rushing Streams. What this translated to for the kill was just over 1M healing, or 2.5% of my effective healing done.

So, the question would be–could 300 Int over the course of the fight make up for the loss in healing? Using the above 1M benchmark as a goal … the 300Int would net you around 10% of that amount in additional HST healing, leaving you with 900k to make up through additional spells. Would that 300Int result in that much in all your other spells combined? It’s possible (if your overhealing dropped off significantly), but unlikely.

BUT … (big but here) … if you were trading that 2pc T15 in to gain 2pc T16, then yes, your other spells would make up that difference. Actually, the differential between the two bonuses alone would be sufficient, even before we looked at the stat gain. Going back to that same log, my ES did a paltry 546k healing. But, count that as 300% absorbs and you’re looking at 1.1M healing. And that’s before we consider the stat gain for those pieces.

So, my very long answer to your question would be …
– Do not break T15 2pc for a 1-item upgrade (stat gain wouldn’t make up the difference)
– Consider breaking T15 2pc for a 2-item upgrade (combined stat gain for primary and secondary would likely push you past the loss of HST throughput)
– Absolutely do break T15 2pc for an upgrade to T16 2pc (the set bonus throughput alone will make up the difference, even before you look at the combined stat gain)

Great info, thanks for the reply!
It sounds like my biggest gain will come from waiting until I can replace both of my t15 pieces at once… Hopefully Thok or Ordos are in the mood to give up a helm this week =)

From just a cursory level, I admit that I’m not seeing much motivation to actually dump that amount of stats into the additional breakpoint, because your throughput is really going to be dependent on, given a maximum number of drops per encounter, how high or low your overhealing is. Unfortunately, that’s not really a factor that you can control. Which means that in the best of all worlds, in a fight with powerful sustained damage (eg: Thok), you’d see a substantial increase. However, in fights where that damage isn’t a constant (eg: almost everything else), I think that extra tick is simply going to increase your overhealing.

well my thought was, thok’s mechanics don’t allow mastery to really shine well because of how the phase transition pushes with raid health dipping below 50% which in turn would favor crit so i have been trying conductivity for it since at the end of it getting casts out is ni impossible SO having riptides rolling combined with extra tick of HR plus being able to extend duration using instant cast IE earth-shock has seemed quite formidable

Hey there Vixsin!
Hope all is well. Just wondering what you’re doing to get the most out of “Ascendance/Restorative Mists”. I always use it in conjunction with S-link, but at times it overheals a lot in my logs. Just wondering what healing spell you’re using during ascendance. Thanks for the great info!

I rarely see my Ascendance overhealing drop below 40% (even when used with SLT and under good conditions)–it’s just the nature of the spell. On this week’s HM Protectors kill, for example, I got in a fairly good use during the first stack phase, and Ascend did roughly 4.1M effective healing with 48% overhealing.

In terms of what I use during Ascendance, I stick with keeping UE-powered HR down, and CHing through RT targets. (I also time my Elementals’ Empower/Reinforce for the extra boost to my throughput). Ultimately, I’m not getting the throughput that we saw in ToT, but on stacked encounters, it’s amounting to around 5-9% EHPS.

Just wondering if you have messed around with EotE this tier and if so what your thoughts on it are? I been using it off and on depending on how much CH i can get out effectively. H Gala, Nour, Sha. Only tough part is that as far as i can tell it does not show up as a proc in WoL reporting. When i do use it my CH total healing goes through the roof but not sure how much i can attribute to it.

It’s not insanely strong but it’s a solid bonus that (if it actually showed up in my spell breakdown instead of the tank’s) would amount to approximately 3-5% of my healing on any given encounter. Given that the T15 2pc was averaging around 2-3%, I think upgrading to 2pc T16 is a good choice (as I mentioned above).

In sum, it’s a very weak 4pc atm, because the Spirit Bros’ casts are only a fraction of the healing that you see when you cast. As it stands, I’m not prioritizing 4pc, because I see it being far more beneficial to dps, tanks, and other healers than it is to me.

Glyph of Riptide has been coming up a lot lately with other Resto Shaman and I can’t for the life of me see how this glyph is anything other than garbage. I know that you often use the glyph. Please help me understand. What am I missing here?

Here’s my reasoning; using Riptide once every 6 seconds is pretty close to all I can manage anyway while still keeping HST and Healing Rain down, in addition to CD’s, raid CD’s, and spot healing. Additionally, the Glyph far decreases the part of the heal LEAST likely to overheal and doesn’t even increase the miniscule part that is MOST likely to overheal.

To be honest, I don’t think your perspective on Glyph of Riptide is wrong–all of the points that you brought up are quite valid. The initial tick is the least likely to overheal (provided that you are using it on players with some level of injury). And in order to get the most out of the Glyph of RT, you do have to use far more GCDs to get the same level of healing.

However, where I’ve found Glyph of RT most useful, and why I’ve been defaulting to using it since I got my meta, is because I largely depend on it to pre-hot players that I know will be taking burst damage in the immediate future. (These are times where there is no significant amount of healing to be done–something that is commonplace for me because I oftentimes heal with 1-2 discs and a holy pally. Thus, it is the only way to convert that downtime into potential HPS).

So, for example, before a collapse on HM Protectors, I’ll try to have RT’s rolling on multiple targets not only for stabilization purposes, but also because it gives me more options for primary CH targets. Likewise, before a Whirling on Garrosh or before Falling Ash on Shamans, I’ll use RT as I would use Rejuv, hotting us as many players as I can. I also rely on it in situations where there is heavy movement (HM Garrosh, Siegecrafter, Iron Jug) or I don’t have the luxury of protracted casting windows (Thok). When I was 2-healing Mantid side of HM Spoils with a Monk, and thus spent much of my time running out with bombs (because monks can’t get targeted with them–what BS!), Glyph of RT allowed me to get out some measure of healing when SWG was on CD.

Does it make a significant difference in my throughput? Not at all. I could and have recorded similar performance not using the Glyph. But personally, I prefer the flexibility that it affords me in situations where I might otherwise be short on options.

So now that we are well into the tier and your progress is over, I’d like to ask you how you feel about the 4pc set bonus? Personally I’ve been going through my logs and it seems like my spirit buddy is doing about 250-400k healing per SWG which is pretty….meh to be honest. For example looking at our HC Thok logs, two uses of SWG in conjunction with Ascendance and Devo auras it has amassed a *whopping* 710k healing done in a situation where it’s supposed to be good (precasted HR and HST, stacked raid). As a whole my spirit buddy did 0,08% of my total healing done which is…well…appalling.

I wish I had some insider tip about how to make Spirit Bro do more healing but, sadly, he’s pretty darn weak. The performance you’ve seen it about as good as it gets, even under the best of conditions. So, personally, I continue to avoid using the 4pc bonus (with its horrific +Mastery secondary) in favor of the number of excellent crit options that we have this tier.

Out of curiosity, could you maybe clarify this to me, Vixsin. I’m seeing you and many other resto shamans gem for 80int+160crit instead of 160 int and in some instances going for 160crit/haste+160 spirit instead of 80int+160spirit.

Looking at the latter with a crit+spirit gem vs int+spirit I’d be switching 92sp to 0,23% crit which to me just seems an absurd trade off.

Is crit truly that much ahead that it’s worth dumping the pure int gemming?

I’ve done my best to dig and search the voids of the interwebz but for the life of me I have not found any site which would explain this to me.

Spirit Bro’s heals are technically “smart” heals, so he will tend to target players in range who need healing. But, it’s worth noting that he might not necessarily choose the best targets when it comes to Chain Heal–he can and will cast it on players standing off by themselves somewhere, resulting in a single hit on what would otherwise be a multi-target heal.